A technician at an Ontario Tumour Bank site at Kingston General Hospital works with frozen specimens.

The Pan-Cancer project made international headlines this
month, but not without the contributions of thousands of individuals and the
teams that preserve their specimens

In an unprecedented, decade-long study of whole
cancer genomes, OICR researchers and collaborators have improved our
fundamental understanding of the disease, indicating new directions for
developing diagnostics and treatments. The Project was powered by 2,800 people
with cancer who donated their biologic specimens to research. These
contributions were facilitated and protected by groups such as the Ontario
Tumour Bank (OTB).

From
the operating room to the freezer

Many advances in cancer research, like those
made by the Pan-Cancer Project, rely on hundreds – and sometimes thousands – of
biospecimens. A patient’s donated blood, tumour and surrounding tissue may hold
clues to future innovations in cancer diagnostics and therapies. But without biobanks
– the repositories that collect and care for biological samples – the clues
within these donations may never be discovered.

“Good science is built on good data and good
omics data can only be drawn from well-preserved tissues,” says Monique Albert.
“The advancements made by the Pan-Cancer Project would not have been possible
without the diligent work of biobanking teams.”

Albert is the Director of OTB – a provincial
bioresource operating in partnership with four state-of-the-art hospitals and
cancer centres across Ontario. OTB plays a quiet but crucial role between the
patient and the researcher, providing the fundamental biologic resources that
research is built on.

Lowering the temperature and raising the bar

Day-to-day, biobanking teams – like OTB – work
to implement the highest standards of preservation. From the operating room to
the freezer and back to the lab, these teams tirelessly strive to maintain the
quality of patient samples to inform cancer discoveries. OTB has held and
raised leading biobanking standards for over 15 years.

“When The Cancer Genome Atlas started, biobanks
around the world promised thousands of samples, but only a fraction of these
samples were adequate for research,” says Albert, referring to Libraries of Flesh: The Sorry State of Human
Tissue Storage. “This served as a wake-up
call for the sector to unite, share best practices and set higher standards
together.”

At the launch of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)
in the early 2000s, OTB was up to – and in many ways exceeded – existing biobanking
standards. This was thanks to the foresight of Dr. Brent Zanke and Sugy
Kodeeswaran, who recognized the importance of stringent biobanking practices
nearly a decade before biobanking became popularized.

As the only Canadian repository that was able
to contribute to TCGA, OTB allowed hundreds of people from Ontario to
contribute to this international initiative and to subsequent studies like the
Pan-Cancer Project.

Since its inception, OTB has
collected more than 185,000 samples donated by more than 21,000 individuals from
across Ontario, enabling these donations to have a greater impact today and for
years to come.

“Each sample represents a trace of an
individual’s life, and we’re honoured to care for these valuable donations to
science,” says Albert. “When they’re preserved properly, they become a lasting
resource with infinite value. We’re proud that the donations from Ontario
patients are paving the way for better and more targeted cancer treatment.”

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